I do share the OP's concern given the gulf between the MEQ armies and the orks. At the moment the interest in Marines is huge...the interest in Orks less so. If things stay as they are I would not be surprised to see the entire Ork faction going F2P just to keep the faction viable.
As much as I love seeing tabletop terminology here (MEQ, LSM, FNP, FRFSRF), it's probably going to make it hard for a lot of forumgoers to figure out what we're talking about.
It is assumed that anyone merely interested in this game will be played the traditional game and understand the terminology.
Your concerns are entirely reasonable. We don't yet know that the Ork Boyz will be weaker than the B2P classes. Behaviour's starting point is that they won't be, or if they are then not by much at all. If that's the case, then the biggest threat to any faction is facing another one with greater population (unless other factors, like organisation, are in play). Indeed, the tyranids are being designed with this in mind, as far as we know, to act as a population balancer by thumping bigger or more successful factions harder. Having the Ork Boyz be cannon fodder won't work, as you say, because while a general of a horde army can be willing to sacrifice 80% of his units to win, players would prefer to be the smaller elite force that feels like it's holding off the tide, as that's more rewarding to play, and in terms of XP/requisition gain. Adding F2P options for all races could work really well, but the overhanging worry is that every poll so far has shown Space Marines as far more popular than other races. The original race preference poll put SM as nearly double the size of the next most popular (chaos), which was larger than Orks and much larger than Eldar. If the F2P variants went on the same basis, SM would have a socking great population advantage over the other three races, and the balancing mechanics might have to be quite severe to stop the Eldar (and possibly all non-Imperials) being worthless. F2P for all but SM might solve that, but could create a lot of accusations that Behaviour are trying to cash in on the SM popularity amongst fans. Ultimately, there's a lot of testing between now and launch to see what will or won't work. We'll just have to see how it pans out, and regularly remind the devs that we want EC to be a success too, and that this issue worries us.
Well you know what they say to people who assume, right...? Never once played the Tabletop game, far too pricey. Don't own a single Codex for any army. Never read White Dwarf magazine or whatever-the-hell it's called. A group of friends got me interested by starting up forum RP (as Orks, no less), and I discovered the rest through purchasing Black Library books and reading wikis. So for my sake, layman's terms pl0x, kthx.
In saying that, your concerns are quite valid, because it could lead to a shortage of ork boyz when more people wish to buy the game and play a different faction.
I sure as hell hope not ... otherwise its going to be a lonely and static gameworld with only tyranids to keep you Company. One should be careful about alienating the 99% before you even have a alpha version of the game. Plenty of chances to start loosing people later on. Pray to emperor that this game breaks out the shackles of being seen as "Those poor hygiene guys in the small room playing with figurines". If it does not, it wont survive.
I concur. Keeping with the stereotype, we want the game world to follow the lore and feeling of 40k enough to attract the poor hygeine guys in the small room playing with figurines, so that they're not detracting from it, but we really do need to attract the much wider group of people who play PvP MMOs and who've vaguely heard of the franchise and know that Space Marines are epic. Preferably without causing them all to pile wholesale into the Space Marines, although that's a different problem.
